Author Archives: Paul Cadario

About Paul Cadario

Paul Cadario is the Distinguished Fellow in Global Innovation at the University of Toronto. Cross-appointed to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Centre for Global Engineering, his teaching and public engagement focus on sustainable solutions for poverty reduction, including governance and the behavior of organizational leaders. Paul joined UofT in 2012 after a 37-year career at the World Bank. His frontline experience working on West Africa and China, prepared him for Bank management, working to set up the Bank’s programs in the Former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. He led the change management and process reform for the Bank’s global information systems, preparing the Bank for an era of decentralization and transparency. From 2001 until 2012, he was responsible for oversight, quality assurance and compliance for the Bank’s trust fund portfolio, working with Bank staff, recipients, and development partners to ensure results and integrity.

Managing the World Bank Group ‘successfully’

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The Board’s Executive Directors have left their second selection criterion dangerously inadequate. 

  • “experience of managing large organizations with international exposure, and a familiarity with the public sector”

I would have thought “successfully managing” is what the world expects. Maybe that goes without saying, even if the Board’s recent history on selecting World Bank presidents from available nominees is uneven.

Let’s consider some markers for “successfully”.

Let’s see what results were achieved during the candidate’s tenure, and what can be attributed to him or her.  A lot of résumé padding involves taking credit for things others do and would have done anyway, activities done by teams of staff with external partners they know. Examples I can think of are NAFTA2 (aka USMCA/CUSMA), IDA replenishments, ‘clean’ audits. Not eligible would be Brexit, the SDGs, and the Paris Accord (a collective success for negotiations, and a collective ‘incomplete’ for early implementation).

Talent management is what managers primarily do. What is the candidate’s experience at attracting and retaining senior staff? Have non-performers been exited for cause, and have any left because they felt the candidate managed poorly, to the organization’s detriment? Continue reading →

Setting the bar for Dr Kim’s successor

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Now that the initial puzzled excitement over Jim Yong Kim’s abrupt resignation and short notice has abated, and the fun speculating over replacements has passed, the tough work of selecting a suitable successor must begin.

Civil society and journalists can gossip about why and why now, and question whether his rumored $20mn signing bonus is appropriate for a man without any skills or experience in infrastructure, investment, or private equity. Fine, but that’s not as important as finding someone excellent to head up the Bank Group starting this spring less than two years after he was given an undeserved second term. 

Governments, I hope, are looking at suitable candidates—women and men—for these challenging, anti-multilateralism times, and civil society is watching. So are World Bank Group staff.

But first things first: let’s flesh out the criteria that the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors have announced for a transparent, open, and merit-based appointment. Yes, we’ve heard that before, and as Lant Pritchett famously observed in 2017 when Dr Kim was reanointed, “this time is last time’s next time.” Will we be fooled and disappointed again? Continue reading →